To Find Myself a Resting Place
by ivydevoss
Summary: All they've got is Dean Winchester, the most messed-up guy on earth... and a man who was once an angel. Just an angsty little thing set in a slightly-AU End!verse. Second person from Dean's POV.


After yet another exhausting, week-long attempt to wreak some order amongst this havoc, you give up and go home. Again. There's nowhere else to go, although sometimes you'd rather be anywhere but there, facing the quiet gaze of all the people who depend on you. Twelve adults and three children. The worst are the children, with their solemn dark eyes that follow you when you return weary and bedraggled. You can't help but feel like a failure when you stand before them all and, in response to a questioning glance from the lieutenant you left behind, shake your head. Once. Brusquely. A motion that says, what were you expecting? The impossible? As always, it was nothing but a futile flash of violence against something too big to battle. That's all it's ever really been, even before Lucifer and the war in Heaven and the onset of this slow, eternal end. Even back then, when it was just you and Sam on the road together, too young and cocky to understand the odds. Now you understand them all too well.

You would wonder why you're still fighting, except you already know the answer. It's obvious. You're keeping up appearances. That's all it is. You know some of the people admire you. On a good day – or what passes for a good day around here – the girls laugh and call you "Fearless Leader". You can't even smile at that, too ashamed of the lie. Fearless? You're chock full of fear. It's like a fist gripping your heart every morning. There's always that tiny moment as you're waking, a millisecond of bliss hovering on the border of sleep, when for an instant you don't remember any of it. Then that iron hand reaches into your chest and wraps its fingers tight around you and the cold sets in. Fear becomes the single driving force. The only thing stronger than your fear is your pride, and that's what keeps you getting up in the morning and doing what you do.

Every day's the same: headcount, perimeter check, weapons check, rations check. You've got people for each of these jobs, but you supervise them all personally, constantly double-checking what they've already checked. Because of the fear. It never stops gnawing at you, and only pauses to give the pride time to step in and run your mouth for you, words getting ahead of your brain as you bark out harsh anger, terrifying a child or making someone wince and turn away. Fearless Leader? Yeah, right. That's what they deserve. But they haven't got that. All they've got is Dean Winchester, the most messed-up guy on earth, trying to head the last resistance against the forces of evil, scrabbling for purchase on the slippery slope of the Apocalypse. The most foolish, doomed plan of all time. And the fear and pride won't let you back out now. They've got you between a rock and a hard place… except maybe now a more accurate turn of phrase would be "between Heaven and Hell".

So you go out, and you fight, and you fail, and you go home. Sometimes you come back short a few weapons. Sometimes you come back short a few people. There used to be almost twice as many. Now it's down to these fifteen lost sheep and their idiot shepherd. Every loss feels like a blazing accusation of your incompetence as a leader, and when you return to the silence of the camp and all those waiting eyes, you clench your jaw in undirected rage.

You've considered taking the last remnants of power into your hands and making an end of your own: either the selfish way – with one shot – or the practical way – with sixteen. There are two reasons why you haven't done it.

One reason is cowardice. Fear is a compelling mistress, and you don't know where you'll go when you die. You desperately wish it could be the way some people used to think it was: life ends, and then, nada. Fuzz on the TV screen. That loud silence at the end of the tape that indicates the larger-than-life presence of Nothing. That would be better than Heaven or Hell, now that you know what both those places are like. If you could be extinguished like a candle flame, that would be the greatest gift.

Well, the second greatest. Because as strange as it seems, this torturous existence of failed mission after failed mission already holds within it the greatest gift, and this is the other reason you make yourself continue when everything else is screaming at you to give up. Yes, there are constant volleys of attack, from within and without: the self-hate, the confusion, the familiar old fear and pride, as well as the regular, ruthless advance of the Enemy, getting closer to tearing down your defenses for good any day now. But amidst them all, you've found a rough gem where you never would have expected it – something that sparkles in the mud, shines in the dark, fills you with fresh air and still manages to take your breath away. And you've found it in a man, a man who was once an angel.

So after yet another failed attempt to try to achieve something, anything you can call a minor victory in this new life of constant defeats, you go home. You drop your weapons and walk past all those eyes full of silent reproach, not meeting any of them, and you open a door and close it behind you and come home to the only pair of eyes that has always looked at you as if you are the greatest miracle in all of Earth and Heaven. Maybe he actually believes that. You won't set him straight.

_~ fin ~_


End file.
